New Research Reveals That Most Employees Want a Do-Over Career

If while you were sitting at work a strange man walked up to you and handed you a magic wand that was said to hold magical powers that would allow you to abracadabra yourself from your current career to a new one of your choice would you do it?

A recent survey conducted by Parade magazine and Yahoo! Finance says you would. In fact, 60 percent of the great American workhorse would love to pack it up at their current job and make a career change.

This seems to be because the overall needs of employees’ are not being met by their employers. For example, 60 percent of those surveyed said that they would rather have a more comfortable place to work than a less hectic commute, while nearly 60 percent said they would rather be given a 5 percent raise than expected to take two weeks vacation.

While workplace camaraderie can sometimes play a role in why some employees choose to stay at a job, 51 percent say that they would continue their friendships with the people they work with even if they moved on to a different job, while 49 percent say it’s good riddance if and when the time comes to wave that magic wand.

More than half of employees believe getting ahead at work has more to do with office politics than anything else, while nearly 30 percent attribute it to hard work. Incidentally, the survey found that younger employees believed more in hard work to get ahead as opposed to the office politics propaganda that the older workers buy into.

However, waving a magic wand to change a person’s career might not be enough to save them financially. Out of the 26,000 respondents, nearly 30 percent say if they got fired tomorrow they would have no savings to last until they found another job, while only 15 percent say they thought they would be able to retire by the age of 65.

The consensus is that it’s going to take more than a little magic to meet the ever changing climate of the American working class.